The Need to Infuse Cultural Competency With High-Quality Induction for the "Rhodes Scholars of Teaching"

• In Event: Education for Diverse Democracy Requires Democracy for Diverse Educators: Critical Insights From National Teaching Fellows

Abstract

In the past decades foundations have launched selective programs for teacher candidates.
Some fellowships provide fellows with thousands of dollars in stipends and requires fellows to select from high-quality teacher preparation programs. These programs also provide each institution with funding to support fellows with content-focused coaching for up to three years.
Indeed, Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, and Pittenger (2014) offers a new framework for continuous improvement that rests on three pillars – meaningful learning, resource accountability, and professional accountability. Professional accountability explores what systems and practices are in place to ensure teachers have the knowledge and skills required to support students to be career and college ready. One such system is access to high-quality induction, which, for novice teachers, increases effectiveness and decreases turnover (Reed, Rueben, & Barbour, 2006; Futernick, 2007). High-quality induction is often defined as content-focused support (Author, 2015). However, given the increasing racial/ethnic diversity of our country’s public school student population – definitions of high-quality induction must also include ongoing support in deepening novice teachers’ cultural competence. This paper explores the need for infusing cultural competency in high-quality induction programs.
Data from this study are based on one-hour semi-structured interviews (Seidman, 2006) of 15 national fellows. Participants were purposefully selected from a larger sample (n= 76) of survey respondents to reflect similar characteristics of Fellows. Survey respondents represented 72% of all fellows. Approximately 73% of participants were White and 13% Latino. Black and Asian American fellows each accounted for 7%. Findings are also based on classroom observations (Creswell, 2009) of four Fellows. Interview participants were ensured anonymity from program staff and leaders, and were recruited via email domains not connected to respective programs.
Fellows described their program mentors, who were affiliated with their teacher preparation
program, as integral to their continued effectiveness and desire to remain in the profession. However, Fellows reported that their ongoing support with mentors focused, exclusively, on content. Mentors, according to Fellows, did not assist with respecting students’ cultural and family differences in the classroom. One example of the need for infusing cultural competency became evident during a classroom observation. Kylie Smith, who is White and in her fourth-year as a science teacher in a large comprehensive urban high school, recently completed a unit on environmental science. During an end of unit discussion, Smith asked students what could they do toadopt behaviors learned in class such as eating organic foods and reducing their carbon footprint. One Black student responded that while she believed such practices were important, she and her working-class family could not afford them. Smith, like many Fellows, may well benefit from induction that increases their cultural competence.
While practitioners and policy makers have given attention to the selection of high- quality teacher candidates and to preparation programs, they should also give a renewed focus on induction. Such a renewed focus on induction must ensure that cultural competence is infused with induction.

Author

• Travis Bristol, Stanford University